There are numerous ways of preparing food for consumption. From drying beef on a rack to microwaving a frozen dinner, methods of preparation are as varied as the needs, tools, and technology of the cook doing the preparation. Some cooks may prefer food that can be cooked quickly, such as with a microwave, so that the food can be consumed as soon as possible. Other cooks may prefer equipment that allows them to cook food in a communal and festive atmosphere, like a luau pit or a campfire. Some cooks may choose cooking equipment that keeps food under pressure to cook it faster, such as a dutch oven, while others may prefer a machine that places the food on display, such as a rotisserie. Still other cooks may desire food that is dried and crunchy, such as jerky, while others may want food that has been simmered and marinated in juice.
Different cooking devices were developed to meet different cooking needs. For instance, a shallow cooking pan is an essential kitchen item, because it can be used to cook a wide variety of foods. A shallow cooking pan can be used to prepare foods such as eggs, sauces, pancakes, meats, and other foods. Meats can sometimes be difficult to cook in a pan, however, because the temperature and time required to cook a piece of meat—depending on the thickness of the cut—can sometimes cause the meat to dry out. Juices added to the pan, or juices which are let off by the meat, can boil or evaporate from the pan. Fortunately, pans can be covered with a lid, which traps moisture, helps the meat retain its own juices, and prevents the loss of the juices which provide so much flavor to the meat.
Similarly, many food items can be difficult to cook because of the difficulty in judging the balance between adequately cooking the food for safety and palatability, and not overly cooking the food to the point of drying or burning it. This is primarily caused by the difficulty in determining an appropriate temperature and time of cooking. One method many cooks use to avoid over cooking a food item is stirring or constantly moving the food. Many cooks will swirl a food around a pan, or stir a food with a ladle or whisk. This movement allows the cook to expose all parts of the food to higher heat than would be possible without such movement.
For instance, in cooking a sauce, a small pot is often used. Heat is provided by a burner or an inductive or electrical element underneath the pot. The pot, made of metal, will become warm, and will become warm over all its surfaces. However, the bottom of the pot will often times be slightly hotter than the walls of the pot. When the sauce is not stirred, heat will, to an extent, be distributed throughout the sauce in the pot, but the sauce laying near the bottom of the pot will often be the hottest. If left to sit on the bottom of the pot, that sauce can cook faster, or even burn. However, by stirring the sauce frequently, the cook accomplishes two things: first, he distributes the heat from the pot more evenly throughout the sauce by convection (actually moving the hotter portions of the sauce and diffusing them to the cooler portions of the sauce); and second, he prevents any sauce from burning against the bottom of the pot. In this way, by stirring the sauce, the cook can prepare a sauce faster than he would be able to without stirring, he can prevent burning of the sauce, and he can likely use higher heat to cook the sauce more quickly.
A cook's careful attention is often required to create such movement in the food. Continuous attention is not always possible, however, and devices such as microwave ovens or rotisseries were developed to cook food without constant monitoring. Microwave ovens provide relative movement between food and a heat source, but many people are adverse to cooking larger meals through microwave ovens, the idea of “nuking” one's food being a turn-off. Further, microwave ovens can often cook a food unevenly. A rotisserie also provides relative movement between food and a heat source, but rotisserie foods can generally take quite a long time to cook because of the relatively low heat used for cooking. Accordingly, there is a need for a device which quickly cooks food without drying or overcooking that food.